Word: whimperer
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Curious Whimper. The 50-minute work, performed without interruption, is more an oratorio than a symphony, with speaker (Bernstein's wife, Actress Felicia Montealegre), soprano (Jennie Tourel), the New England Conservatory Chorus, the Columbus Boychoir and a drastically altered orchestra: 17 string players were crowded off the platform to make way for a percussion section that had to man five timpani, three side drums, a bass drum, four kinds of cymbals, a tam-tam, three bongos, three temple blocks, a wood block, sandpaper blocks, rasp, whip, ratchet, triangle, maracas, claves, tambourine, chimes, glockenspiel, xylophone, vibraphone, celesta, piano and harp...
...poor Munch tried to lead rehearsals. "Beaucoup mieux, Charles," Lenny called down from the balcony, then finally took the baton himself for one of the last run-throughs. "Wonderful! Marvelous! Beyond my greatest expectation!" Lenny cried when all was ready. And indeed, when the music dissolved into the curious whimper that closes the work, Boston's well-dowagered matinee audience gave Bernstein and all the performers a nonstop 15-minute ovation...
...last, too . . . All the time he was making love to me. Feebly, but tenderly." Lewis got up, lurched into the night, and returned with a bottle of cognac, which he could not manage to open. "Suddenly he looked at me. His eyes were like red moons. He started to whimper. 'I cannot ruin your life . . . you are wholly good . Get up-you mustn't stay here-I will take you home . . . Tomorrow I will go away . . . You will never see me again. I am finished . . .' I saw he could not take me home . . . And so I went...
...withdraw his state police and replace them with contingents of the National Guard. Early the next morning, President Kennedy signed a proclamation that federalized the guard. On his orders, Defense Secretary Robert McNamara simply retired the guardsmen to their armories. Wallace, shorn of his troops, gave up with a whimper. "I can't fight bayonets with my bare hands," he cried, ignoring the fact that there had not been a federal bayonet to be seen anywhere...
...conduct" during the filming. At the same time (1955) the critical Cahiers du Cinema proclaimed it one of the best movies ever made. Up to the finale, I would be inclined to agree with the Cahiers critics, in spite of the weakness in acting and flashback technique. But the whimper ending, which could so easily have been worked into a bang, drops it from the sublime to the extraordinary...